(One of the New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of the Year for 2010) A four-time winner of the O. Henry Prize, three-time winner of the Whitbread Award, and five-time nominee for the Booker Prize, Irish storyteller William Trevor is "probably the greatest living writer of short stories in the English language," according to The New Yorker and many other sources who have agreed. This powerful collection brings together 48 stories from After Rain, The Hill Bachelors, A Bit on the Side, and Cheating at Canasta.

"Whether a story found in this magnificent accumulation is new to the reader or familiar, Trevor's technical skills—for instance, abrupt time shifts that are seamless and add rich layering to both plot and characterization, and pinpoint-perfect word choice resonant as a subtle but effective spice—can be readily recognized by readers with an eye to fiction construction; but on the other hand, these skills will be unconsciously gathered by readers unconcerned with technical analysis. In this master storyteller's hands, rural Ireland becomes the cosmos in which every one of us feels at home. The unfortunate ending of a friendship, the pain of a wife's discovery of her husband's affair, a husband's sacrifice of his affair so his mistress won't be regarded as just someone's "bit on the side"—these specific situations assemble under the book's umbrella theme of ordinary life as undulating waves of pleasures and crises."—Booklist (starred review)